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Cinzetti's was built on the site of the old Glenwood Theater. It's not much to look at from the outside, but the free-standing brick building boasts an interior as atmospheric as any 1920s picture palace. Its theatrical auditorium -- a feed-o-torium, in the case of this buffet -- has been artfully designed as a faux Tuscan "piazza," with cobblestone floors, stucco and stone walls, and lots of props evoking an outdoor market. From a visual standpoint, the place deserves an ovation: The kitchen beautifully presents as many as eighty different dishes, many of them surrounded by set decorations like piles of shiny black eggplant, glossy peppers or cans of Italian tomatoes.
"It's like eating at Disneyland!" said my friend Marie.
"No, it's like a buffet at an upscale Las Vegas casino," said her husband, Jim. Just walking through the different serving stations, he said, was "total sensory overload."
Marie and Jim, who live in Johnson County, sheepishly confessed that when the restaurant first opened, they thought it was going to be like Dean & Deluca, a combination market and eatery. So, they walked in one day to do some shopping and discovered that the place is an Italian market only in the figurative sense. A real outdoor market in Italy, of course, would have more vegetables, better bread, patrons smoking cigarettes and people yelling at each other.
But instead of a snaggletoothed fishwife hawking planks of raw seafood, Cinzetti's has a neatly coiffed young man in a starched white jacket standing over a pan of deep-fried cod. Many of the young waiters and waitresses seem to have been hired for good looks rather than for intelligence and attentiveness, which just adds an extra cinematic dimension. I've seen demicelebrities in the place (a couple of local TV personalities and one obnoxious actor) as well as the usual buffet devotees who greedily load food on their plates as if, starting tomorrow, they will be forced to eat only bread and water for the rest of their lives.
Depending on who's sitting at nearby tables in one of the six dining rooms, a meal at Cinzetti's can be La Dolce Vita one night and La Dolce Lard Ass the next. One night I watched two Cellulite Sisters shovel food into their gullets like cartoon characters. In contrast, a perfectly composed nuclear family at another table meticulously nibbled on salads and cubes of fresh cantaloupe before getting up from the table, setting off for the serving area and returning with ... more salads and clusters of grapes. I was impressed with their discipline, which I certainly didn't have on any of my four visits to the restaurant. I mean, if all that stuff -- "over sixty genuine Italian recipes," brags the restaurant's brochure -- is out there, wouldn't you want to try all of it?
If you go, you must. Cinzetti's is a terrific bargain, especially by local buffet standards. But be warned: Not everything tastes as good as it looks, and consistency is a problem. What tasted divine on one visit -- say, those chunks of crispy fried cod with lemon caper sauce -- tasted like breaded Styrofoam with citrusy cornstarch paste the next.
For diners who know Italian fare only as spaghetti and meatballs or pizza, Cinzetti's is an inexpensive and entertaining way to broaden one's culinary horizon -- sort of. The kitchen never made "lasagna Bolognese" and "rigatoni Bolognese" in real Bolognese fashion (which requires a pretty substantial meat sauce, unlike the anemic version here). And even though it does boast lots of bacon, the watery farfalle carbonara isn't made with egg yolk and parmesan like the real thing.
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Cinzettis pizza was so nasty for a place that is suppose to perfect all things Italian. When I called to make a reservation a rude gentlemen answered the phone, I was able to make a reservation though. When we arrived our reservation was not available and we had to wait in the foyer with about 10 other nice sized families. 20 min later we were taken to our seat and greeted by our server who was a very friendly young lady. Food was not good for almost 20 dollars a person, it lacked personality. Very easy to tell the dishes were made in extreme bulk. When I was walking to get a plate for my daughter I heard yelling and cussing and realized it was a boss or manager degrading a Mexican cook because something was burned, I just took my daughter to the desserts and ended the night. I will not go back and do not recommend this corperate money maker, this day in age we should patronize smaller more meaningful local restraunts instead of a giant corp ready to degrade anyone and spit them out as long as bottom dollar is good.
Cinzettis pizza was so nasty for a place that is suppose to perfect all things Italian. When I called to make a reservation a rude gentlemen answered the phone, I was able to make a reservation though. When we arrived our reservation was not available and we had to wait in the foyer with about 10 other nice sized families. 20 min later we were taken to our seat and greeted by our server who was a very friendly young lady. Food was not good for almost 20 dollars a person, it lacked personality. Very easy to tell the dishes were made in extreme bulk. When I was walking to get a plate for my daughter I heard yelling and cussing and realized it was a boss or manager degrading a Mexican cook because something was burned, I just took my daughter to the desserts and ended the night. I will not go back and do not recommend this corperate money maker, this day in age we should patronize smaller more meaningful local restraunts instead of a giant corp ready to degrade anyone and spit them out as long as bottom dollar is good.
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